Embracing the Digital Revolution

News & Stories: In Focus

Editorial

The rise of value-based healthcare creates a compelling need for increased transparency and accountability from care providers. We need to show that care pathways are both effective and efficient. Connected medical technology is one way to turn patient data into faster, more accurate diagnoses and more personalized treatments. Already, there are more than 500,000 different medical devices that could connect to healthcare databases and networks. Physicians will need the aid of artificial intelligence and computerized clinical decision support to turn this massive amount of data into valuable care for their individual patient.

There is a great deal of work ahead of us in the healthcare industry so that we can capitalize on digital advances already seen in other industries. On the path forward, digital technology can no longer exist in a silo. Business leaders are recognizing this – digital innovation steering committees have proliferated, reflecting the desire for digital transformation at the C-suite and board levels. Digital innovation isn’t a goal or an initiative—it’s the very water we swim in. Breaking down the silos is the key to digitalizing healthcare.

I wish you a valuable read as you dive deeper into this selection of inspiring customer experiences and insights into the future of healthcare’s digital journey.

Today

Check out the current status of digitalization in healthcare.

Transformative Technologies

A digital healthcare transformation is taking place globally that will have an immense impact on patients and providers alike. We will see a trend toward more patient involvement in their own healthcare and the increased use of telemedicine. Still in the early stages, artificial intelligence is helping providers to analyze the surge in patient data to advance the quality and value of patient care. Being able to tap into and analyze all this information is the future of healthcare.

Experiencing the Future of Surgery

What molecular biology research is to internal medicine, technological progress is to surgery: Miniaturization, automation, precision imaging, digitalization, and artificial intelligence are opening up new avenues. But what, exactly, will surgery look like in twenty years?

The broader implementation of artificial intelligence will be based on versatile systems that can be seamlessly integrated into existing workflows and IT architectures. Assessing multiple anatomical structures and organs on a chest CT more quickly and precisely would be one strategy to make AI support a self-evident aspect of image interpretation.

Learn about the future of artificial intelligence in the diagnostic laboratory and what hospital senior executives and laboratory directors expect from innovative technologies like computer-aided detection and diagnosis, clinical decision support, predictive maintenance, and intelligent vision systems.

From Vision to Reality

How are healthcare systems, hospitals, departments, and physicians already profiting from digitalization in their daily work? The objective of all change must be to achieve optimal care and to put the patient at the center of all digitalization efforts. Learning from other industries, alleviating administrative tasks through automation and digitalization is one step on this path –one that undoubtedly gives healthcare workers more time for their patients. And digitalization has also already found its way into the clinical sphere, where patients benefit from improved image interpretation and procedure planning.

From Movies to Medicine

The images are certainly eye-catching, but that’s not all. Cinematic rendering – a new type of photorealistic 3D visualization inspired by Hollywood – could transform the way physicians are delivering care.

Klinikum Frankfurt Höchst, Germany, found a way to save time, reduce costs, minimize errors, and streamline regulatory compliance in its laboratory inventory management processes, according to Dr. Oliver Colhoun, the laboratory’s director.

Gone are the times when a hospital’s digital strategy was limited to choosing a suitable hospital information system. Anyone hoping to remain competitive must take into account the entire patient journey and especially the quality of care.

Ready or not – we are in the midst of what to many people still feels like “the future”. The rapid advance of digitalization is changing every aspect of our lives. Technologies such as the Internet of Things, augmented reality, blockchain, and social media are bringing about an unprecedented transformation, affecting our work in ways we never anticipated.

While the use of artificial intelligence in radiology eases workflows, it may also lead to a better and more precise understanding of disease. Predicting the course of cancer from imaging data could become a part of clinical routine in the next few years.

Imagine the challenge of connecting and managing 300 point-of-care blood gas testing analyzers operated by over 8,500 users at more than 250 sites spread over an area the size of France, Spain, Sweden, and Germany combined.

The Mater Private Hospital in Dublin, one of Ireland’s leading private hospitals, applied digital process optimization using workflow simulation that made it possible to achieve their desired optimizations results within a matter of only a few weeks.

Overcoming Challenges

Unlike the retail or manufacturing sectors, the healthcare industry has traditionally been slow to adopt new technologies. But the great fear of digitalization is a thing of the past. The good news is that enterprises and employees across the industry now see value in embracing the digital transformation. And so do patients. However, despite recent success and future promises, several challenges still lie ahead when it comes to integrating digitalization into daily tasks and processes in the healthcare sector.

Successfully Hiring Health IT Talent

Healthcare providers need to continually integrate and analyze patient data to provide quality care while reducing costs. Organizations that manage to recruit and retain the brightest minds in IT will keep a competitive edge.

Cybersecurity in healthcare is a growing concern. Faced with an increase in cyberattacks, healthcare systems across the globe will have to spend billions in the coming years to protect healthcare delivery. We spoke to Marc Rose, head of the CyberHealth program at Siemens Healthineers.

The increasing integration of digital technologies in imaging opens up new ways of working, but also entails new tasks. In the future, radiologists may see themselves as data communicators – and work with more interdisciplinarity than before.